Hello!
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Thought it was time I dropped you an update, lots of things have happened since I got back from India!
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So... I got back in April, and promptly got the trots. 3 and a half months of fresh food (mostly vegetables) must have turned my belly into a food snob because as soon as I started eating food laced with preservatives and crap back here I was iller than I had been at any stage in my trip! I was the best (the very best) man at my best buddy's wedding about a week after I got back which was sweet, despite me almost bloody crying halfway through my speech (the less said about that the better eh?) and I also finally met the girl I had been stalking on Facebook while I was away. She's now my official licensed and bonded girlfriend (I'm running out of valium though so how long that will last I don't know!) and things are going fantastically well... more on that later :D
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After the wedding I went back up to Manchester to stay with Kev for a couple of weeks while I figured out what I was going to do with my life. With my compensation money dwindling fast i needed to get a job and be a grown-up again. I had kind of made the decision while I was away to come back home to Derbyshire and settle down, and hanging around with my old friends and being near my family for the 2 weeks running up to the wedding had re-enforced that decision. So I headed home and moved in with my old mate Jamie and his 2 cats, Dallas and Ramirez, in their little house in a village called Leabrooks only 5 minutes away from my bestest best friend Andy.
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I started the job hunt pretty much straight away, and found nothing. There was absolutely nothing about in finance, it was so bad that I interviewed for a couple of jobs as a Recruitment Consultant, but thankfully I seem to have left that part of my life far behind as I didn't get offered the jobs. Thank God. I even went as far as to go to the local factories looking for work, only to be told that they were only taking on Polish people which annoyed the tits off me. So I swallowed my pride and went to the Jobcentre to sign on. My days consisted of waking up and making Amanda a brew before she went to work, then settling down with the laptop and Jeremy Kyle to trawl the internet job boards. I must have applied for 100 or more jobs each week with absolutely no success whatsoever.
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It's lush being so close to my family and old schoolfriends though, I've seen my beautiful little nieces more in the last month than I have since they were born!
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So yeah, at the moment I'm living with Jamie, Dallas and Ramirez which is pretty sweet, though I'll be moving out soon as Amanda's asked me to move in with her. Though when this will happen I don't really know as we seem to be booked up every weekend for the foreseeable. Life's starting to make sense for the first time in ages and it rocks.
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Kev, I hope you like the capital letters!

goodbye india, hello england

so..... this has been my last day in india. my last day wandering around, being free to do what i want to do, looking at cool shit and eating curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

it's been the most amazing 14 weeks of my life. without question. i've seen and done things that have been beyond my wildest dreams, things that i didn't think i would ever be capable of. i've been so scared at times i thought i would cry, and laughed so hard and for so long i thought my face would explode. i've travelled for thousands of kilometres through jungles, deserts, mountains and dusty plains. i've stayed in 5 star luxury, in rooms with bedbugs and cockroaches, and lived for a week in a hovel next to the beach. i've met so many amazing people from all over the world - canada, new york, germany, holland, grimsby, california, austria, new zealand, oregon, south africa, brazil, mexico, china, thailand, italy, manchester, russia, israel and gloucester :D i've been drunker for longer than i've ever been, i've danced in the sea listening to crazy tribal music, swung through trees on zipwires with one of my bestest friends from university, been clubbing in hyderabad's latest trendy nightspot halfway up a skyscraper and had dinner with aurangabad's prominent businessmen, educators and the state government of bihar. i've seen the taj mahal, the golden temple, the ruins of the vijayanagar empire, the gateway of india and more cave temples than you can shake a stick at. i've walked through tribal villages and tea plantations, hung off the side of a suburban train in mumbai, had a go on chinese fishing nets, smoked weed on the beach while watching fireworks with kim and hannah and a nepali guy in goa, had dinner in bangkok with a friend from my game and watched an evening of thai boxing. i've drunk singapore slings at the raffles hotel, had a cooking lesson in the kitchen of a woman from jodhpur, been thrown off a moving train, seen the himalayas and taken a train trip that took 40 hours. i've rocked up in strange places with no idea where i was, no idea how to get to where i needed to sleep, and no idea how to communicate to the people around me yet always managed to get a roof over my head and food in my stomach. i've laughed, i've cried, i've been lower than i've ever been and happier than i've ever been ever.

and i've made it. i didn't think i'd make it 1 week, india was such a frightening place when i got here. but i've made it. even when i was feeling like the only person on the planet, was missing home and felt so so so shit i stuck it out. i've done it.... and now i'm coming home.

this country is amazing, such a contradiction in every way. so much poverty, yet so much wealth and so much promise. the landscape is truly stunning, the culture and the heritage bowls you over. the passion of the indian people, their love for their country and their humble, open

generosity makes this place what it is. how on earth does india work? i've asked myself this so many times and still haven't really come up with an answer that satisfies me. 30 odd states, all with different languages and history and culture... it's like 30 countries operating as one. the one thing that binds everyone together is their love of india. on every truck, car and motorbike there is always a sticker or handpainted saffron, white and green flag proclaiming "i love india" or "india the great".

so yeah.. for those of you that have stuck with me - thank you for having a read of my ramblings. hugo reckons i should keep blogging when i get home but i think you've all heard enough from me for now. maybe on my next trip.....

the final countdown!

my last day or two in kolkata were cool. i wandered and i wandered and i wandered. the most impressive part was around the bbd bagh area, there were lots of wonderful examples of british colonial architecture. admittedly most of the buildings were now in a state of decay but it was really easy to imagine how grand and impressive they were in their heyday. interestingly the best preserved and cleanest building in the whole of kolkata was the income tax office :D

my train from howrah to mumbai was scheduled to take 30 or 33 hours (i forget which) - and it took 40.... it wasn't that bad actually, what's 7 hours or so when you're on a massive journey? i was sharing my 4 berth with a really miserable old woman, her daughter and her daughter's young baby. they were the messiest people i've ever seen in my life! after day one there were crisp packets, cake wrappers, rice, curry and all manner of crap strewn everywhere on their bottom two bunks - i was glad to be in the top berth and well away from it all though the smell caught at the back of my throat which was quite annoying. actually the stench coming from the whole carriage after 2 days was pretty hideous! the baby was the cutest thing i've ever seen and was really well behaved, which was a blessing as when they got on i thought "uh-oh... screaming baby for 2 days... augh!!"

usually on the train in 2ac you get a plug socket so i didn't bother charging my ipod or mini dvd player thinking i could just plug them in when i got there. silly, silly david! had i learned nothing from my trip in india? of course there was no charge point, so i read my book for the most part, and got some good work done on the best man speech i have to give in just under 2 weeks... it's not worrying me at all i promise! ordinarily i would sit in one of the doorways smoking, drinking chai and watching india glide past but on this train i had a tyrant of a conductor. every time i got settled in he would tell me to get back to my seat, despite protestations that i had travelled all over india on the train and had never encountered a problem before. which really sucked as this journey was my farewell to india. i was crossing the whole subcontinent so it seemed the perfect opportunity to sit and reflect on my time here. oh well, the view from the window was just as good i guess.

so now i'm back in mumbai and i'm having a great time. i had yesterday to myself which was top, visiting the sights i had seen before to take one last look and chuckling to myself about how scared and shocked i was by the place when i first got here in january. compared to the rest of india this place is a little slic

e of heaven. it's pretty clean, there's pavements, coffee shops, restaurants, everyone speaks english and it's so not scary at all!!!. i met with kim and hannah again this morning, we had booked a room for the three of us at bentley's back in january and paid the deposit and everything. bentley's had no record of this, despite the girls having a receipt! so they lost their 2000 rupees which sucks big time. i reckon we should write to the lonely liar, as they have bentley's as "our pick" and it shouldn't be... the gits. luckily my hotel owner is cool and he's put a mattress in my twin room so we're going to watch movies (superbad is on the list... :D) eat cake and have a fun last night for them in india - they fly home tomorrow morning. today we've spent all day wandering and shopping. first to crawford market to get a bucketload of spices, then to fashion street (the mg road) and back to colaba to actually buy some stuff from the street hawkers we've ignored the other times we've been here. the art of haggling is our bitch.. we've gotten so so good at it after 3 1/2 months travelling that we've gotten some real bargains!

i'm really going to miss this place, india has gotten under my skin and i love it, i really do. i'm ready to come home though. bangers, mash and onion gravy for tea on thursday if i'm lucky!

train ticket madness, mother teresa and a blessing from a brahmin

i woke up early yesterday with three objectives. 1) get a train ticket sorted. 2) get some new specs (i lost mine on koh tao in a moment of dawn swimming with cocktails madness...) and 3) go visit mother teresa's motherhouse. i grabbed some breakfast at the blue sky cafe, which is a traveller institution on sudder street (though i can't think why as the food was average and every traveller in there kept themselves to themselves.) the lonely liar said the place was buzzing with travellers exchanging tales

and advice but i guess that marked the end of the blue sky's heyday. something i've noticed is that anything the lonely liar recommends or raves about is invariably crap. once the establishment has a recommendation i guess the effort stops, they are guaranteed custom as for the first day in any new city you always stick to what the guidebook says until you've found your feet. that's the law.

so anyway, after a mediocre brekky i headed onto park street which is the main shopping drag. i don't know if i've mentioned this site before, but indiamike has been a lifesaver on many occasions. they helped me to find a well established british opticians who would be able to whip me up some new specs - some sexy ralph lauren ones, 58 quid including the lenses! the traffic here is just as barmy as everywhere else in india, but with an added twist... pretty much every street here is one way, but at 2pm every day the whole system reverses so cars have to go the other way!! i'd missed the nuts factor of india while i was in thailand and in this kolkata really hasn't let me down! so needless to say being sans-specs was causing me a bit of trouble as i have zero peripheral vision on my left side and the traffic just zooms around here, ignoring pretty much all traffic rules and changing directions at the drop of a hat! so yeah, i'm all kitted out in spiffy new specs and i look incredibly good :D

where was i...? ah yes, after i bought my new specs i headed over to howrah station to try and sort out a ticket to mumbai. over a million people pass through this station every day, and i reckon most of them must have been there when i was. i thought cst in mumbai was busy - there was absolutely no way on this earth i was going to get a ticket before next week so i hung around a while people watching and then jumped on a ferry across the hooghly river to the main side of town. i sneaked a few photos of the howrah bridge (apparently it's illegal to photograph it for some reason) which made me feel all naughty.

my next mission was to get to the motherhouse of mother teresa's order. i knew that all i had to do was go down park street and chuck a left at some point.... but at which point i wasn't entirely sure... i used the metro to get to park street, something i had been looking forward to. i don't know what it is but i love underground systems, the ones in delhi, singapore and bangkok were fab, really clean and well maintained and reliable, who wants to guess what the one in kolkata's like? i'll give 50p to the winner... well, it was old, rusty, dirty, no signs or maps and actually what i expected a metro in india to be like. it was crowded, at each station it was every man for himself and every stop or so the thing would halt suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of the tunnel. what an experience!!

i got hideously lost trying to find mother teresa's house which i am actually thankful for, as i got to see parts of kolkata i ordinarily wouldn't have. kiddies playing in the street, families going about their hard, impoverished lives on the roadside, people washing under leaking pipes, men sifting through garbage dividing plastics and metals up for re-sale and maybe food for the day. it really saddened me to see my fellow man in such a shit state, so hopeless and with absolutely nothing yet managing to cling on to existence by any means possible. for maybe a mile up to mother teresa's house i saw all kinds of horridness, so so many people in such a bad way. when i got there and looked around the motherhouse, saw her tomb and her simple room i was really humbled, and aware that i was in the presence of someone special. the pope blessed her in a way that means she's one step down from being a saint (forgive me for not knowing the exact terminology) and after seeing the poverty around her and reading about the sacrifices she made in her life to help those in need i could see why. i sat in the main chapel which houses her tomb for maybe 15 minutes as kolkatans filed in silently, pressed their foreheads against her simple white marble tomb and uttered silent prayers. it was altogether an overwhelming afternoon and another experience i will never forget.

i had an interesting time trying to get back to sudder street. the taxi drivers weren't interested as the one way system had switched so it would be a pain in the ass to get me there so i got in a rikshaw and waited for 3 others to join me, apparently they always fill up before they leave unlike the ones elsewhere in india. he dropped me off about a million miles away so i ended up walking the rest. before i turned in i bought a train ticket from one of the travel agents. well, i gave him lots of money and he said come back tomorrow.... so having achieved everything i set out to for the day i flomped in my hot, smelly skank-o-rama(tm) hotel room. i'd felt a little bit left out of conversations with fellow travellers about bedbugs and cockroaches before but now i have some of my very own! i'm not complaining though, the room is as cheap as chips, the shower's one of the best i've had on this trip and there's a swift internet cafe across the road from which i am typing this over-long blog post. last night i was a very lucky little essex boy indeed. as i was channel surfing hoping for some bionic woman or at the very least some bones i heard "du du du duuuuuh the chaaaaampions" and it was the arsenal - v - liverpool game! i of course watched it and finally got to sleep at about 3am.

today has been tip top also. it started with me going to the travel agent and him telling me that my ticket had been cancelled, so i collected my refund and headed off into the kolkata noise grumbling about the fact i should have bloody done it myself. i found a masala dosa man on the street and breathed two in for my breakfast before flagging down a taxi and heading to fort william, site of the black hole of calcutta. i knew that the place was off-limits to civilians as it is now an indian army base but i thought i'd try my luck anyways, even if only to get a glimpse of the place. no dice. as soon as i walked through the main gate i was accosted by two soldiers in funny hats and politely but firmly asked to leave. i asked if there was anywhere i could see the building and they said no, there was nothing to see anyway.

i suspected they were fibbing but i needed to crack on and get to my next destination, the kali temple in the south of the city. the holiest of all hindu temples in kolkata, i was alarmed at my taxi driver's blank gaze when i asked him to take me there. his english was perfect so it can't have been a language thing, and it wasn't until after we had asked about 3 people that he knew where to go. what a cool afternoon! i wandered around with one of the brahmin, a chap called rasbehari who told me all about the history of the place and the ceremonies that take place within. he showed me the inside of the temple, where maybe 2 dozen faithful worshippers were whipping themselves up into all kinds of frenzies, and then took me to a strange, gnarled old tree which has it's own shrine built around it. the tree was covered in small clay stones attached to it by means of thin yellow and red thread. rasbehari explained that hindus believed that the tree would grant them blessings of fertility and long life, and young newlyweds would come here and offer the clay, one hair from each of their heads and a small offering (in the form of cash usually) to be granted such a blessing. i chatted some more with my new priest-friend and i was invited to the sacrifice the next day - each day they sacrifice a goat to appease kali as she is quite the badass, and they then cook the goat with rice and hand out the food to the many needy people who reside around the temple. i don't know whether i will go or not, i don't think i would have any trouble watching the animal die - after all i have killed rabbits and chickens myself back in my roughty-toughty army boy days - i think i would be uncomfortable being present at a very holy ceremony when i am not part of the religion involved. we'll see, i'll think on it some more tonight as i battle with the humidity, bedbugs and cockroaches in my room tonight trying to sleep. as i headed back to sudder street i tried again to get a train ticket, this time from a more reputable looking establishment. i again gave the chap lots of money, again the chap said come back tomorrow... watch this space.....

i've just scrolled up and seen how much i've written... sorry... there's a lot going on here!

kolkata

sorry for the spam-blogging but i've had a great day and thought i'd share it with you all.

so i'm back in india and i feel awesome! i don't know what it is about this place but i felt instantly at home when i landed. something about thailand never really sat right with me, i think it's because you get off the plane at bangkok and everything is so easy, everything is clean and (relatively) ordered. you don't have to graft for your travel. you go to a travel agent, buy a ticket, get on a bus and you're there - everything works and everything is done for you. plus there's the fact that i feel like a pioneer again now i'm back, i saw more westerners in a day in thailand than i have on my whole trip in india - i don't think i like that kind of travelling but i definitely needed the 3 weeks or so there to kick back and relax .

i'm in kolkata (calcutta) and the poverty is everywhere. lining every street are homeless people and i've lost count of the amount of naked kids i've seen playing in the rubbish today. i arrived pretty early this morning after a nightmare travel day and a half from koh tao. i shared a cab with a crazy girl called maya from new zealand who has no guidebook, no real idea about india and was just going to wing it here for a few months. when she told me this i grinned and said "you'll love it, watch out for rikshaw drivers they're bastards.. oh, and keep a stack of 10's in your pocket nobody in this country has any change" and couldn't really think of anything else to say. the thing about this place is that no amount of preparation, advice, hints or tips can really prepare you for this chaotic, contradictory, wonderfully nutso country. looks like the time in thailand has done the trick as when i left here i was pretty sick of it all.

so, after a fairly hectic cab ride i found a nice enough room for 300 rupees with a tv and (allegedly) a hot shower and had a wee snooze. this afternoon i have been wandering around the victoria memorial which is easily as impressive as the taj mahal. going to stay here for maybe 3 days to check out some colonial goodness before heading to mumbai on the 30 hour train - eeshk!!
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now i'm off to hunt me down some food (when i've finished gmail chatting with young christopher plumb....) thai food is lush but i love the indian food more. maybe it's the fact i get to eat with my hands and throw it all over my face.. who knows....

the daddy of all travel days

so i realised last night that i only have 10 days left, 2 of which will be taken up travelling between kolkata and mumbai so i hurriedly bought a boat and bus ticket from koh tao to bangkok and booked a flight to kolkata for tomorrow morning! aaaah! i've had a cracking week chilling on the beach with jaclyn and karen, eating lush food and getting tipsy but the holiday is over now... it's time for grime, filth, squalor and hassle again before i come home.

i bumped into becky again on the khao san road last week before i went back to koh tao which was nice, exchanging more tales before we jumped on our overnight bus. yay, we were sat next to loud drunk germans who'd just landed and were over-tired and over-excited.... great. when we got there i chilled out a LOT and met some incredibly cool people - for the first 2 nights it was new york, manchester, 2x canada and a guy from los angeles called leaf (i shit you not....) and it was great, drinking cocktails with the sea lapping our calves and dancing and talking and having fun. i saw some thai boxing which was great, the first couple of fights were weird as i'm not really that big a fan of 2 blokes twatting hell out of each other so i looked on in sick fascination for a while until i saw the technique and concentration these guys needed to just stay conscious and i slowly got into the swing - by the end i was yelling and screaming with everyone else. it was like something out of a movie, the thais were all hanging around the canvas screaming and waving their betting slips and at the end one guy who had obviously lost a wodge of cash leapt on the canvas and started kicking off at the referee and the judges, it was all very surreal (and i managed to capture it on video which was a bonus!)

so yeah, i'm back in bangkok now, slap bang in the middle of the daddy of all travel days. took a boat from koh tao at 10:15 this morning, bus from chumphon at 13:00 with no ac and more loud germans which arrived at 21:00 in bangkok. now i need to traipse across town (stopping for street pad thai - yum) to get my mini-backpack that's in storage and try to somehow consolidate my thailand gear and my india gear and then get a taxi at 6am to the airport tomorrow for a flight to kolkata. travelling's hard work i tells ya!

a day trip to singapore

my big bag was in singapore and i needed to get it so karen and i jumped on a plane and did singapore for 18 hours. karen was like a kid in a sweetshop, the shopping in singapore is like nowhere else on the planet and she went nuts!

the original plan (if i didn't come home) was to go back to india yesterday, but i'm staying in thailand until april 6th now. i'm having a great time again. i'm not lonely any more and i've recently realised that my concept of "home" no longer exists so the homesickness has pretty much gone away. there's no more claire and i, anna and baz don't live next door to us any more, adam and geoff don't live around the corner now, the rampant is no longer our local. there's no more victoria park for us. it was the best 5 years of my life, we did everything together, we were like a family. i'm sad to say goodbye to that but i'm hap

py that i get to make a clean start when i get home and just because we no longer live within spitting distance of one another doesn't mean our friendships will suffer, it just means "nipping over to geoff's" will take half an hour rather than 2 minutes.

so, i'm in bangkok again and we're heading for some beach fun. the main islands in the gulf of thailand are all very different. koh samui is benidorm, koh pha ngan is ibiza and koh tao is paradise. we all quite fancy learning to dive so we're going to koh tao. ordinarily i'd be "but i've been there already let's go somewhere else" but this place is seriously beautiful. remember the old bounty adverts? it's like that there. plus i get to retake all my photos as they were on the camera that got stolen. then we're going to island hop back to the mainland, koh pha ngan, koh samui and then up to koh phi phi. it should take maybe 2 weeks and will be great. then i need to get up to bangkok to catch a plane back to india, i think i'll go to kolkata and then catch the train to mumbai as i adore travelling on the indian railway and i think it will be a wonderful way to say goodbye to india. i'll meet with kim and hannah and then it's hometime.

i have 17 days left - man this trip has flown past. there's been good times, dark times, frustrating times and moments of pure joy. i have learnt so much about the person i am and met some amazing people along the way. i'm so glad that i'm not alone any more, 2 1/2 months of solo travel was enough i think and if i hadn't met up with karen and jaclyn i would have come home early with my memories tainted by the feelings of sadness and loneliness i was experiencing toward the end. they have been my travel saviours and i love them so much for it.

back in bangkok for some canadian fun

so... i met up with karen and jaclyn yesterday evening. after jumping up and down squealing like schoolgirls we had some lush food and a wander around to catch up and talk about our experiences on the road. i instantly felt better about being here. all of a sudden i didn't feel like the sad loser walking up and down khao san on his own, i didn't feel like the only person in this stream of travellers. i had people to talk to, people to party with. they are doing their level best to convince me to stay on for the full term and go home from mumbai as planned but i'm still not 100% sure i'll do that. i'm still tired of living out of a bag, wearing the same clothes, and not having my friends and family and stuff around me - i'm still homesick. the good thing is that the loneliness has pretty much evaporated since being with them, which is the biggest thing that's been getting me down. they are wonderful, bubbly, lovely people and we took up where we left off in bengaluru - you know how when you go and see a friend who you haven't seen in years and nothing has changed, you just slip back into conversation and goodtimes? well that's kind of what has happened over the last 24 hours with karen and jaclyn, and i feel so much better for having met up with them. so watch this space...

today has been cool. it started with me introducing the girls to boot's the chemist (there's a branch on the khao san) and they were just a tiny amount excited about the place. i think i'll have to make them up boot's christmas hampers each year as karen in particular came out laden with handcreams and bodywashes and stuff with a big grin on her face. we then took a walk around and saw some monuments, temples, palaces and a big swing (photos to follow, the usb thingy is in my room) which took us most of the afternoon. it has been hot, thirsty work as it is so so humid here at the moment so we have just returned from some nice airconditioned starbucks goodness.

so.. yeah.... don't know what i'm going to do with myself. i feel re-invigorated and much happier about being away, but i still miss home tremendously and know that i need my life back pretty soon. maybe i'll stay here for a few days and then still come home earlier than planned. maybe i'll get enough of my motivation back to have a week in bengal before going to mumbai, or maybe i'll stay here and do the southern islands before going to mumbai at the start of april. who knows?

chiang mai, davina, david and the gibbon experience

i met up with taj again in bangkok and this time he brought cassilis and nemocaca who i also know through playing warcraft. we had a top afternoon sitting and eating cakes talking geek to each other which was great.

i've been in chiang mai for a couple of days with my good friends from university, davina and david. the bus trip from bangkok was hellish, it took 10 hours and the airconditioning was broken so it was like being in a sauna and there was condensation dripping on me from above the whole way through. it was horrid. on arrival i checked into my little guesthouse and had a good long sleep before heading over to where davina and david were staying. it was so great to see them and we had lots of stories to exchange over our food - they have travelled through hong kong, vietnam, laos and cambodia and will head south now ending up in australia before they go and do south america. they're away for a year and will pretty much see everything!

yesterday was one of the coolest days ever, we went on a trip to do the gibbon experience. it was awesome,we basically spent the day whizzing through the trees on zip wires screaming and giggling like little schoolchildren. it was bloody fantastic. we had some lovely food last night and now davina and david have headed off to pai. i have 3 hours to kill before i go back to bangkok this evening. i hope the airconditioning works on this bus it's so ridiculously hot and sticky today!

now we come to something pretty big. i think i'm going to come home this weekend. like i said in my last entry i've been homesick for so long, as long as i can remember actually, and i think i'm done with travelling for now. i've been such a lucky person and i feel privileged to have had the opportunity to travel around and experience new cultures and see some of the most beautiful, amazing things the world has to offer but enough is enough. i'm tired of living out of a rucksack, wearing the same 3 sets of clothes, always moving around and most importantly i'm done with being alone. i know that i have met people and travelled with others but i miss my friends, my family, my stuff, my manchester, my everything. being alone for the last 3 months has helped me work out a lot about the person i am and what i want from life. this has been a real experience for me and certainly one that i needed but yeah, i think i'm done. i want a routine again, to get up and go to work and to have a life. i think that's been the most important realisation for me on this trip as before i came away that was the last thing that i wanted - i was fed up of the 9 to 5, fed up of england and now i want that back.

i hope in years to come i won't regret this decision, which is why i haven't booked my ticket yet. i'll mull it over for a couple of days and make the final decision in singapore. i know that i will return to india so i'm not too worried about missing calcutta, darjeeling, varanasi and so on as i will definitely see them in the future.

so yeah, that's where i'm at right now :D

back in bangkok

i have just spent a fantastic 5 or 6 days lolling on a beach in paradise. not much to report there really apart from "i sat on the beach and ate lush food" which was exactly what the doctor ordered. shame i won't get to show you any photos of it as on my first night back in bangkok i was robbed of my camera and mobile phone. how on earth it happened i don't know, my bag is pretty secure and i didn't notice anything untoward. it's a massive pain in the arse as whilst i have insurance it will take 2 months for them to get the money to me so i've had to dip into some non-travelling money to buy a new bloody camera. and i've been used to having two 4gig memory cards and now i'm reduced to 1 measly gigabyte of storage :( very angry david....

now i don't know what to do next. part of me really wants to come home to the uk as i have been homesick for as long as i can remember now and this has just added to that. part of me wants to go back to india to get away from all the bloody travellers - harriet in singapore said that from the second i got off the plane at bangkok i would join a conveyor belt of travellers and i wouldn't get off it until i landed back in india - and she was so right! david and davina are in chiang mai which was kind of on my list so i might go and see them tomorrow after lunch with taj and cass (my warcraft friends) for a couple of days before coming back to bangkok to meet jaclyn and karen on the 19th. i have a flight booked to singapore on the 21st and i need to sort out a flight back to india from there.

i really want to go to kolkata next but that will mean an extra day in singapore which i don't know if i can be arsed with - once i leave thailand i want to be back in india asap - and the only regular flights seem to be to chennai. i guess that will be ok as i wanted to do the 30 hour chennai > kolkata train anyways. oh well, i guess as always i'll just see what happens!

going to spend today going around the sights i went around before koh tao so i can re-take all the bloody photos i've lost. what an arse :(

koh tao

yeah, i'm in paradise :D

i'll post more later

bangkok

bangkok's a bit weird. i'm staying near the khao san road which if you've seen the beach (gakk) is where leonardo di caprio drinks the snake blood. it's a nightmare here, the place is teeming with people my brother's age getting munted. 10 years ago andy and i would have been in our element but i'm a bit past that now and it's not really the place for a solo traveller as there's a lot of attitude kicking around and trying to meet people is pretty hard. if you take yourself away from this area though bangkok is a cool, vibrant, clean and modern city with plenty to see and do. there are temples and palaces all over the place and the shopping malls are huge. i went on the mrt and skytrain today and they were spotless, quick and cheap. it's incredibly hot and muggy here but everything's airconditioned so if it gets too sticky it's easy to nip into somewhere and freeze up for a second before heading back out into it.

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last night i had dinner with a friend from my game called taj who is from bangkok. we had a great evening sat opposite the wat arun (which was beautifully lit up from across the river) eating pad thai and talking about all kinds of stuff. he studied in nottingham so his english is pretty perfect (and he didn't call me duck which i was impressed at) so we could talk about a whole range of things without the language barrier being a problem.

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tonight i head to koh tao and it looks bloody beautiful. 15 hours on a bus and ferry - pah! that's nowt :D

singapore slings, the 73rd floor and a cable car ride

we had another bimble yesterday doing various things until mid-afternoon when becky left for thailand. we were all sad to see her go and if you're reading this becky we've had a poo time since you left and everything that follows is a big fat lie....

so after saying farewell we finally went to the raffles hotel for some singapore slings, joined by a lovely lass called harriet who had been working at the prince of wales for the last month and is now heading for india (loaded down with good advice from us of course...) and an irish chap called owen who left today for new zealand on a 2 year working visa. the cocktails were horrendously overpriced but i'm chuffed to bits as they are one of my favourite drinks ever and were made of yum. the place was fabulous and reeked of money - the drinks were S$22 each which works out to about 7 quid. after the cocktails we had a wander around the hotel complex before heading up to a viewing gallery on the 73rd floor of a nearby skyscraper to be gobsmacked by the view of the singapore skyline at night. the elevator was pretty rapid, arriving in about 10 seconds or so and our ears popped like crazy. there were a few gorgeous bars and restaurants up there with full length windows for us to look out of and it was yet another thing that has taken my breath away on this trip. it was like something from the future (in fact most things here have been..) and a hush fell over us as we stood and stared at the beautiful skyline before us.

after that we headed to clarke quay for a sit down and a beer in a mock-up of a scottish log cabin complete with kilt-clad singaporean waiters and waitresses. which was bizzare. a bit later on we were joined by two crazy girls from our hostel and were talked at for the best part of an hour before repairing to a snazzy nightclub for a bop. the nightclub was one of the swankiest places i have ever been in ever, the dj was one of the worst dj's i have ever heard ever ever and the girls walked in on the middle of a catfight in the ladies loos - finally something untoward about singapore! pete has been looking for some dark side to this perfect city and hadn't been having much luck and this cheered him up immensely. apparently there was lots of hitting in the face with shoes going on...

today has been a very good day indeed. we took the cable car over to santosa island which is this weird theme park off the coast (the cable car was a tiny amount scary) so we could ride on the downhill luge thing. you're basically in a cross between a luge and a go-kart and left to barrel your way down a long hill with twists and curves before coming back up on one of those ski chairlift thingys. i of course had 2 gos.

tonight is the last night with pete and anna. i'll be sad to say goodbye they have been the perfect travelling companions - uber-chilled and immensely funny - and this week in singapore (with becky as well) has been one of the best. the four of us will undoubtedly meet up again and share more goodtimes but it won't be singapore. what a lovely week :D

thailand tomorrow afternoon.

singapore

i had some yoga and reiki in kochi which was nice. one thing the chappie said after he sorted out my shoulder issues (bloody hard beds grrr...) was that i was bad at making decisions, and that i should try to make more decisions without umming and aahing too much. so while i was getting a haircut i decided to go to singapore earlier than planned and have a mooch around.

so here i am :D i got on the same flight as becky which was nice. our rikshaw ride to the airport was rather an ordeal - we broke down a couple of times, they tried to get us to buy their petrol, and the "one hour one hour only" turned into 90 odd minutes. we were then refused entry to the airport as becky's ticket had the wrong date on it (she was due to fly a few days before but ended up staying in kochi) so we had a bit of a palaver trying to get her a new ticket for our ticketless airline, and then after checking in we saw our flight was delayed until 3am... 4 hours away.... we did alright out of it to be honest, a few 50p heinekens from duty free, comfy chairs, my blanket and a bag of mini twixes and we were sorted.

we landed in singapore yesterday morning and headed to little india which is where most of the backpackers are, found a hostel after traipsing a while and trying a couple which were full and then went for a beer to calm ourselves and to make decisions about where to stay for the remainder of the singapore stay and so on. we went to a pretty obviously backpacker-y pub / hostel called the prince of wales and bumped into pete and anna, 2 people we had seen a couple of times at kochi airport having issues at customs (they arrived in india using a land border which seemed to confuse the hell out of the airport staff) and we had also bumped into them a couple of times on the way from the airport. we sat and had a bit of a session that lasted into the wee hours, had plenty of laughs, saw a singaporean jazz band, had some awful burgers and chatted to a few other travellers (mainly about india..) pete and anna are just lovely, they are on a 12 month trip, 5 months in, and had done russia, mongolia, china, nepal and india. they're heading to vietnam next and i am incredibly jealous! it was weird actually, as we would talk to everyone we could find about our experiences in india and at various points in the conversation people would say "so you didn't like it then?" and we'd look a bit confused and realise that most of our experiences and memories of india were usually associated with frustration, hassle, shock and so on... we of course all said "no way man we loved it - totally going back again!"

singapore is cool, very clean, very modern, flashy and there is a lot of flesh on show! the current fashion for the women seems to be to see how short shorts can be and after the modesty of india it has been a bit of a shock. to be honest it has been a bit of a surreal couple of days, kind of a reverse culture shock of sorts. the traffic is so quiet, the streets are spotless, and we haven't been hassled once. today was lovely, walking along orchard road doing some shopping and generally wandering around looking at stuff. i'm pretty chilled out at the moment, i've found some lovely people to hang out with for a few days and it's all good. shame it's quite rainy though :(

kochi

kochi is lovely. i was planning on being here for 3 nights and tonight will be my 5th..... it's such a calm, pretty, relaxed place to be. the first night was a bit stressy as my bus was late and dropped me about 20km from my hotel. then my taxi driver didn't know where my hotel was so we drove around aimlessly for an hour or so to find it. it was all good though and i made it in time to catch the man utd game. kochi is made up of islands and a peninsula, i was staying in ernakulam which is on the mainland and close to the transport hubs.

so on my first morning i jumped on a ferry and headed for fort cochin, the main historical area. i spent the day walking around, looking at the portuguese heritage - churches, old houses and mansions and the like. in the afternoon i went down and had a look at the chinese fishing nets which line the north shore like spiders ready to pounce. one group of fishermen beckoned me over and we sat and chatted a while over chai while they told me about their lives and their work. at the end they asked if i wanted to help them land the catch, which i did (while the oldest guy took some cool pics.) that evening i sat and ate my food and went off in search of a bar with zee sports so i could watch the carling cup final. sadly i didn't manage to find one but along the way i met a german guy and a brit who were also on the same mission so the night wasn't a complete bust as we sat and chatted the night away over some kingfishers and papads.

the next evening i was joined at my table by a girl from salford as there was nowhere else for her to sit in the restaurant. we got to chatting and i joined her for a classical keralan music performance (which we agreed was good but went on a bit...) before going for a pot of special tea. licensing laws in kerala mean that you can't have open alcohol containers on the street, so bars and restaurants which have outdoor seating get around the problem by serving the beer in teapots with teacups to drink it out of which was rather fun and we had a lovely evening nattering away before sneaking a beer to the shore next to one of the nets where we befriended a cat and a dog who were snoozing nearby. becky was staying in a homestay which closed its doors at 11 and by the time we were finished chatting it was almost 1am. the bridge over to ernakulam closes at 1am so we hurriedly made our way to a rikshaw (driven by a nice driver and his barmy friend) and made our way to my hotel. it took bloody ages - i had to get over to fort cochin tomorrow as it was too much effort getting to and from ernakulam. as we got there, there was a surprise waiting for us on my bed... something had managed to get in there and leave me a present on my pillow...... gross. new sheets etc were ordered and we eventually passed out - it's so humid and warm here.

the next morning we decided that it was time for some luxury, so as i write this i am fresh from a night in a 4 poster bed, with attached sitting area, bathroom with a jacuzzi and a swimming pool out the back. it was bloody lush and cost 7000 rupees, which is about 90 quid.

for a few weeks now (well, since hampi) i've been toying with the idea of going to thailand for a mini 2 or 3 week holiday. it started when i heard the canadian girls sharing tales with the people we did the bike tour of hampi with, and has kind of continued as i hear more and more about the place. the way i see it is i have the money right now, i'll definitely be back to india to finish off what i haven't seen, and i just feel like a change for a while. there's every possibility of meeting up with my uni friends davina and david who are in laos at the moment and heading to thailand and the canadian girls are headed that way as well. so yeah, i'm going to spend a few days in varkala and then i'm going to see if i can get a cheap flight to thailand. happy days.